Article: Before Zane was a star ... a veteran journalist and published author admits he told his former cyberpal that she would never make it as a writer. Now he just marvels at how wrong he was.

Zane is someone that I struck up a conversation with in an Internet chat room about a decade ago. I had just published my memoir, Waking From the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class (Anchor, 1994). Zane saw my book on Amazon.com and asked me for advice about publishing her own work. She told me she wanted to be a children's author, but was having no success with getting New York publishers interested in her fanciful fiction. "Do you know someone, an agent or editor, that could help me?" Zane asked.

There's no greater feeling for a neophyte author than having an unpublished writer look up to you as a mentor. I couldn't resist taking this cyberpal under my ...

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